Vice President Mike Pence Is Mostly Right About Climate Change.
Yesterday we had the vice presidential debate, and from what I saw of it, Mike Pence won the debate overall. However, that has not stopped the news media like Reason Magazine from saying half-truths about the debate. Now don’t get me wrong; what Pence said wasn’t entirely true either, but if you are going to report on what he said, you should tell the whole truth.
What happened was that Pence said that Joe Biden wants to ban all fracking. Reason wrote that this was not true. They claim that Joe Biden just wants to ban fracking only on federal land. Although Joe Biden said he doesn't plan to ban all fracking at once, he does want to take measures to lead to zero net emissions by 2050. If this is what he really intends to try to do, we can expect more regulation or outright bans on the fossil fuel industry over time. So although not entirely correct, Pence is not entirely wrong to say that Biden wants to ban fracking.
Another point Reason tried to make against Pence, was when he talked about how the US is polluting less. Reason said:
Pence also noted that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are down. That is true, but the chief reason that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are down is because cheap natural gas (produced from largely from fracking) has outcompeted coal. If President Donald Trump had kept his promise to revive “beautiful clean coal,” then U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would not be falling.
This is reduntent. Why bring this up if what Pence said was true? There is no point in saying that Trump likes coal if that is not what we went with in the end.
The Last point is about climate change. Reason says that the fires in the western U.S. are worse because of climate change. This is only partly true. Although climate change has made things worse, it is not the biggest factor as to why the fires have been so bad on the west coast. The biggest reason is because of “environmental” regulations. These regulations have made it so that brush can not be cleared, forest can’t be thinned out, and there can’t be controlled burns. If environmental regulations were not so strict, the fires would not have had the fuel to cause so much damage. As for hurricanes, global warming may be a cause but we do not know for sure, and if it is, we do not know by how much. If we look at the last 100 years it doesn’t look like it has gotten any worse.
So in conclusion, most of what Mike Pence said was true. There were some exaggerations and some false claims he made in the debates but nothing I can recall that was outrageous to say. But if Reason and other journalists want to have any journalistic integrity they should give the full picture and not just bits and pieces.
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Sources:
Reason’s article: https://reason.com/2020/10/08/no-biden-wouldnt-ban-all-fracking/
